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Hardee's "gourmet" burgers cost more because they use higher-quality ingredients, but they are still a major rip-off, and the ingredients are still cheap ones.
I get fast food like twice a year.
Local non-chain places can be great. They also can be shit, it just depends on the place.
We had this one place downtown that was the bomb called the Blue Moon diner. It folded recently. They were probably spending too muc hon food costs, paid their employees too much or had too many employees stealing. The new restaurant there is higher-priced for food that is not nearly as good or skillfully prepared.
That's one thing I can say for fast food. The quality and menu differ from country to country, but within the U.S., the chains turn out a very consistent product. Everything is on sophisticated equipment to facilitate the assembly line and even someone that is a horrible cook can make the product.
I even shy away from fast food places that have waiters.
I've worked in plenty of those places and I know about the rampant cross-contamination that goes on and that most of the ingredients used are of not all that great of quality. Most of it comes in frozen and far too many side dishes are prepared in a microwave which is just ridiculous. Seriously, to return to a point, you are much more likely to get food poisoning from a place like Applebee's, Ryan's, or Outback than you are from a McDonald's. Waffle House is simply the worst offender imaginable because they deal with raw bacon and don't have to wear gloves most of the time. If you eat there, you have to watch the cook carefully.
For awhile, when I worked at a Chili's in Athens, we got in these steaks from Buckhead Beef in Atlanta. They were amazing. They came in a refrigerated truck and were vaccum-sealed and went straight to the walk-in cooler and not the freezer. Then, we switched owners and, because they were cheaper, started using frozen steaks that sucked.
While working at a Bennigan's as head cook I got a five-hundred dollar bonus once because our restaurant had the lowest food cost of any Bennigan's in the region. This means that the restaurant wasted the least amount of food. Much of this was because I know how to cook to order and I kept the other employees in line...it certainly wasn't the management; they were too busy doing cocaine and trying to get laid* by the waitresses to care about what went on in the kitchen. I move like a cat behind on the line in a kitchen.
To clarify something, they "get laid"* If you refer to it as "getting laid" when talking about yourself, there's an outstanding chance that you don't have sex very often. I have sex with women. It doesn't fall in my lap without effort like it used to, but I have sex almost as much as I'd like to have it.
Hmm...sex talk...maybe someone will read this now.
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